Healthy Happy Honey Bees in Charlotte
  • Honey for Sale
  • T's Bees Blog
  • Swarm 911!
  • Contact
  • Honey Uses
  • Links

T's Bees Blog

Wherein you learn all the trials and errors, successes and failures of a simple city beekeeper.

August - Time to Feed!

9/26/2012

 
Picture
At the end of August, the hives seemed to be doing well considering the long, hot summer dearth this year. Nectar flowed super early and fast in the spring, and seemed to quickly shut down. All six hives did well on their spring stores, minus the harvest I took. None starved. It was time to start mixing syrup and feed, to stimulate egg laying by the queen and get the hives back up to strength in time to prep for winter. Beekeeping is always about 3 to 4 months from now, unless you've screwed up and an emergency situation has developed, I've determined.

Picture
Traffic, while not great, was steady. Every time I said, "Natasha is dying. She's not going to make it. There's no traffic!" I'd open up the hive to see a steady number of bees, albeit in declining summer numbers. Same for Boris. The queens shut down egg laying when there isn't enough nectar to go around. Still, traffic was far less than what the nucs were showing me. But, these two hives have queens that are Russians. The nucs are Russian-local hybrids mixes, so maybe that has something to do with it.

Picture
My nucs were doing just fine over the summer. Hive Bullwinkle, at left, was really doing well despite the dearth. Hive Sherman, at middle, was doing well, and the little itty bitty feral nuc I got from Cory and Nolan's house was steadily increasing its numbers from that single frame of bees and queen cell I'd taken home. I started feeding these three in July with the Ziplocl baggy feeding method. I installed reducers in the front so the nucs could defend themselves from robbing. This summer dearth resulted in a lot of robbing that my fellow beekeepers experienced. Bullwinkle was bearding this day. Both it and Sherman had screened bottoms on most of the summer, and they bearded faster than the solid bottomed Hive Peabody at right.

Picture
This was just super cool. Bullwinkle is bearding in drips and drabs, almost forming long queen cell shapes of nothing but bees in the afternoon.

Picture
A newbee and friend (Hey, Keith!) decided that after a single year of beekeeping he had to give it up for the next few years, though I tried to talk him out of it many times. I met Keith at one of the Mecklenburg County Beekeepers Association meetings this spring. He had an apiary at a friend's yard many miles away and couldn't check his hive often. He'd bought tons of equipment, including drawn comb, and enjoyed a great spring honey harvest this year, right off the bat. But, not paying attention to the apiary and inspecting quite often enough, wax moths began to get the better of the hive, and the bees absconded. He cleaned up what was left and took it home. And he bequeathed all of the equipment to me. It was a blessing, as I still needed to build supers and frames and was trying to figure out when I could buy the materials and when I could put it all together. Keith's gift was a major relief. When I got home I put all the equipment underneath the apple tree and let the bees clean out the combs and woodenware. In no time at all it was a cloud of bees, and the materials were cleaned spic and span in a couple of hours. August contained happy surprises!

    Picture

    Tom Davidson is the owner and beekeeper at T's Bees.

    Subscribe by email

    Enter your email address:

    Delivered by FeedBurner

    Categories

    All
    2 Queen Hives
    2-queen Hives
    9 Frames
    9-frames
    Apiary Inspection
    Autumn
    Bait Hives
    Bee School
    BPMS
    Cartoons
    Combs
    Cut-outs
    Drawn Out
    Early Spring
    Early Summer
    Early Winter
    Extracting
    Feeding
    Flora
    Foundation
    Foundationless
    Hardware
    Inner Covers
    Insecticide
    Late Autumn
    Late Spring
    Late Summer
    Late Winter
    Mentoring
    Mid Spring
    Mid Summer
    Mid Winter
    Mid-winter
    Nucleus Colonies
    Nucs
    Orientation Flights
    Oxalic Acid
    Packages
    Plasticell
    Pollen Patties
    Queen Cells
    Queens
    Small Cell
    Splits
    Swarms
    Tanging
    Trap Outs
    Trap-Outs
    Treatments
    Washboarding
    Wax
    Winter

    Archives

    March 2020
    September 2019
    February 2018
    July 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    November 2016
    September 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    October 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013
    April 2013
    March 2013
    February 2013
    November 2012
    October 2012
    September 2012
    July 2012
    June 2012
    May 2012
    April 2012
    March 2012
    February 2012
    January 2012
    August 2011
    July 2011
    June 2011
    May 2011
    April 2011
    March 2011
    December 2010

  • Honey for Sale
  • T's Bees Blog
  • Swarm 911!
  • Contact
  • Honey Uses
  • Links